Herzog wrote:RE: WERE - I am kinda liking the direction we are going with WERE right now. Chaffing at the rules and such, yet not being completely evil. Having our own agenda, etc. Basically, stay the course or whatever without changing the groups dynamic and such

Good to know.

I was not really looking to change WERE, but I only have looked ahead to the next chapter. After we finish it, we will be starting the 2nd module and I have not even peeked yet.

Herzog wrote:RE: Enworld, yea i forgot to ask if it that site is declining, could we poach members from there? /shrug

I have not tried recently, but I was planning to start looking there if I cannot fill the gaps from MW. The problem is I don’t know so many players that I would ask since the 6 games that are stalled out contain some people I don’t really know, or they suck.

The LPF community does have some decent players though, but I think they might be busy. I will start hitting them up if I need to. Because that site has very few games starting and there are still plenty of long-term players there as well.

Herzog wrote: RE: Recruiting. I dunno, perhaps it is because i've not put in any effort into it, and thus not had to face the disappointment, I still feel we ought to try. But again, I can't really offer anything that what I've already suggested as far as recruiting..../shrug. I still think we should try reddit.

Our plan lately has been to focus recruiting on invitations. Perhaps that is still the way to go. Maybe with a few more players from other sites coming in, we can ask them to look into bringing more.

As much as I am not impressed with Sirfinn, he might know another player that can come over. After my recruiting drive is over, I will revisit.

Yes, I am disappointed when all my attempts have failed, but that is also the nature of PbP. No one sticks with it forever. The longer people are doing it, the pickier and fickle they can get for their entertainment value.

As an example, I got a reply from GlassEye and he replied that he was enjoying life better after trimming his games from 15 down to 4, using that free time for other things. I have been playing with/around him for 4 years on all three sites.

Herzog wrote: RE; Facebook and webpage.... I mean, i looked at plothooks facebook page, and it had nothing. Also, a facebook page means you will lose some anonymity.

Yeah, that has come up in our conversations. I think that is really why I have not looked at doing that further not that you mention it.

Herzog wrote:RE: Socialization. back in the hayday, the chatroom really helped with that.

I think the lack of chit chat might be perceived as cold and such to other players. It is a problem we have always had. I know last year, we tried to a push to have more OOC chatter.

Yeah, that chat room was good at getting to know people. When I could access at work it was a whole different situation. But it also takes up valuable time that I put to better use writing for games.

But this lack of socialization is probably the biggest issue that is hurting our brand of a friendly and close-knit site. I am as guilty as any, not taking the time for stupid chit-chat on other sites either. But really, it doesn’t take much time an effort, does it?

Maybe we need a Socialization Thread outside of games?

That would be easy to implement and if we explain to people why we are doing it, maybe our existing players will join in to help. The current core players are the ones we should be investing time in. Heck, some of them could actually help our invitation recruiting!

Herzog wrote:Now I did some thinking last night about the site. it does make me sad we are talking about the closure of it. But if we don't decide recruiting in general is worth it, perhaps the compromise is to focus Window and Freeform games on it. Focus and rebrand on the window and such type of games, and appear to that target audience. Keeping in line with that, P would asking to move the windows games you have on MW to here be realistic and not stupid?

Yeah, I am not too keen on closing the site either, but like all things it requires attention to keep nurturing it. This is time we are currently investing in just discussing it, so it is important to us.

Rebranding as a Freeform and The Window site might be a good idea that can be implemented. How to actually rebrand it (changing the logo and such) might be hard. But restructuring the Index page is not that hard.

From my experience, players that are interested in Freeform are a different breed than the normal D&D and PF crowd. Advertising on Reddit might attract a very small number of them, but they could be writers and the sort of players we are looking for. Maybe the typical statistics for attrition are different too.

I am not sure about moving The Window games from MW… I also need to maintain my persona there too. I will consider that in the future though, particularly if I need more players.

Herzog wrote:Basically what I am saying is I am considering playing on MW for the DnD, pathfinder games.

Also, I will not move FO, IHMS, or any freeform games/projects. They will remain on URPG until it's death.

You playing on MW is a corner that we have been very hesitant to turn, because I know it changes things, even if we try not to let it. I don’t really want to move any games, not if we can recruit and bring in more people by private invitation. Some of my games would stay as long as the doors are open too.

Herzog wrote:Would also be too much to start any new games here at URPG, but still recruit for them at MW or other sites?

That is touchy since I have to be very, very careful to protect myself against a pooching label. That was one reason Plothook banned me a few years ago. One of the players I tried to recruit told everyone about it when he turned against me.

My game advertisement strategy (as a GM) on MW right now is also focused on expanding The Window and building relationships with new players. So I am in the middle of recruiting to run the Reign of Winter AP. I have 6 applicants, but some might not get their characters done. Most are new to The Window.

I think I should do the same at EnWorld. Even if I only get 1-2 bites, then maybe I can interest those players to come over to URPGs since there are not enough interested to actually run it at EnW.

P is going to try recruiting again to fill wholes in the games here? Anything you want me to do there? I've got the new window game brewing, so that is something.Do we recruit from reddit, or leave that be and focus on invitation only?What about starting the socialization thread?Work on rebranding to Freeform and Window? I did notice that the IHMS and Fallout games have the Window tag now. Thanks, i was going to ask some one to do that.

On another note....perhaps this is out of line...but since it is down to the three of us....can we go ahead and make me an admin?

Herzog wrote:P is going to try recruiting again to fill wholes in the games here? Anything you want me to do there?

Yes, I have been working on this. I have one new member coming in and he is making characters for Wayfarer’s and Adv Grp A. I have not had anyone reply for Saltmarsh yet. Other than welcoming new members, there is not much to be done.

Herzog wrote:Do we recruit from reddit, or leave that be and focus on invitation only?

We appear to have mixed feelings about this. For now, let’s focus more on investing time/energy on our current strength and potentially rebranding.

That means we need a closer knit culture of friendliness. So when I seek out new players, I can say we have a good group of people at a small site.

Herzog wrote:What about starting the socialization thread?

Should we discuss this more? Or should we focus on more socialization in our current games?

Creating a thread is easy enough; it just needs the right wording in the first post and the supporting advertisement in the games to ask people to participate.

Herzog wrote:Work on rebranding to Freeform and Window? I did notice that the IHMS and Fallout games have the Window tag now. Thanks, i was going to ask someone to do that.

Yeah, I made those minor updates when I went to fix my signature after dropping “Admin” from my user name.

I was also looking to see if there was a way from the ACP to change the banner at the top of the site’s Index page. To rebrand, that would need to be redone. It looks like that requires something more than what we can do as Admins.

But restructuring the organization of the Forum’s Index page is easy enough. But maybe we need to discuss that some more?

Herzog wrote:On another note....perhaps this is out of line...but since it is down to the three of us....can we go ahead and make me an admin?

I think it is a fair request.

Re: The Black Company. I would go with invitations and advertise was well. It sounds like you could accept new players into it as you go, so maybe it only starts with 2-3 players as we getting it rolling and test driven.

PMiller wrote:I was also looking to see if there was a way from the ACP to change the banner at the top of the site’s Index page. To rebrand, that would need to be redone. It looks like that requires something more than what we can do as Admins.

The logo is an image......the text next to it has to be text somewhere since it can be highlighted and selected. Perhaps in a style-sheet somewhere? Or maybe in the database?

Yeah, absolutely, you deserve to be an Admin, H, especially with all the thought and effort you have put into this convo and thinking up ideas for the site. I'll go ahead and do that in a moment.

Again, lots to catch up on here.

Re: rebranding. Why don't we decide exactly what we want to say/the new URL/etc.? Once we have that, we can decide on what we want the logo to say. As I recall, the "U" shield is a selectable image in one of the style sheets, and the font choice for "unlimitedrpgs" was something Guildmaster chose to go along with the shield (I think it's the GTA font, if I remember correctly). If we can mock up something to show him what we want, it will make it a lot easier for Guildmaster to implement. Once we have our whole idea basically laid out, I can present it to him and ask him to do it.

Re: friendliness. Yeah, I agree we can do more to work on that. Maybe we should try to chat in the OOG discussions more. Give links to games/books/movies we want to recommend, ask gaming-related questions, start threads inviting people to talk about favorite games/the best game idea they've never implemented, game systems they want to learn etc. We can look at the general discussion and gaming discussion at MW for ideas about topics that might be popular. Maybe it will just be the three of us commenting at first, but perhaps others will join in when they see more activity.

Thanks for your recruiting efforts, P. Hopefully we can make your new recruit into a new friend.

RE: OOG discussion....i've been grappling this one for the past few days....there is like zero traffic there, and i've no idea what to put there. I will try to think of some discussion provoking threads...however, i have a feeling that it would just be us posting in them....I am not sure how many of other regulars use the new posts button to see new posts or just rely on their notifications? Dunno

RE: Branding....i guess the first question that needs to be asked is, are we keeping the domain and name? Once we have that decided, then we can work on the tag line and logo. On thinking about it some, Unlimited kinda could lend itself to freeform...i mean freeform writing has Unlimited possibilities? Shrug. If we change the name, i want something that has a abbreviations. Unlimited can always be refered to as URPG, Mythweavers is MW, Giant's in the playground is GitP, so on.

As for the OOG discussion, I just realized something - the permissions were set so that guests could not read the forum. I just set it so they can. Maybe that might help in some small way, if strangers can get more of a feel for the site before they join.

Re: Socialization Thread was something that came to me that would specifically be to generate conversation between existing players to communicate across games and get to know each other better. I was thinking to come right out and tell people why too and encourage people to participate. Basically same sort of thing as the Welcome thread, but more apppropriately named. From there, maybe it will spin off topics to other threads. I think many of our existing players are not cruising around the site because nothing happens.

Re: Branding. I am not sure we really know if our site has a bad rep that needs a new URL to change. With Plothook down, I am guessing we are just too small now to be known. So keeping the name is easiest. I do think we need to change the words on the banner and would like to explore changing the logo and perhaps the color scheme(if that is easy). But if things are selectable from options, then we need to know what options are available.

We only have two topics left on the table right now. I am not itching to move them elsewhere since this thread is as good as any for a three way discussion. If we wanted to go 100% public on the rebranding discussion, then we can begin again in the Out of Game Discussion area.

Back to the original discussion on this game... I think we shall leave it as is for now. With some new blood potentially coming in and The Black Company launching, we might revive KCs with a new campaign scenario. Since the whole reason I got into d20 Modern Urban Arcana was to play a setting similar to Shadowrun, it is quite possible to revive this game under SR4 setting.

Well, it's been a few months since the changes.....and it seems like we're back where we started concerning growing the site....we've have the few that Pmiller's brought in....but not much new traffic in and of itself.

Though I do say the impromptu threads have been a success. Just wish other people besides regulars would try it out...

Herzog wrote:Well, it's been a few months since the changes.....and it seems like we're back where we started concerning growing the site....we've have the few that Pmiller's brought in....but not much new traffic in and of itself.

Though I do say the impromptu threads have been a success. Just wish other people besides regulars would try it out...

do we need to revisit anything?

I have not tried recruiting anyone new for a few months. Of course we don’t have any new games to offer and no one jumped at the Impromptu threads from off-site. A few people expressed some interest, but they are not keeping up on my current games to have time.

Unfortunately, I cannot seem to get Aura or MerryMortician more involved either. They both are looking to increase their involvement at EnWorld and LPF more instead.

But we also have not lost anyone either.

I do have some ideas on recruiting more players or porting over a game. I have the Hell’s Invasion I started based on your Impromptu threads. I have 3 players in the Prologue, but 2 are long time EnW gamers and I don’t think they will move. But the other is a recent player from Australia and maybe I can look at recruiting him. I am just waiting to see if he has the staying power to last.